tater

Reentry heat is already done, along with the parts in a few mods. On top of that, the part descriptions mention reentry in a few places as if it is a thing. It should be there, period.

Kiven that destroying huge facilities full of kerbals is apparently "fun," I guess we can expect DRE, life support, etc… or is that less fun because it kills fewer kerbals at a time?

There's a mod manager called JSGME used for Silent Hunter that is in fact generic. It swaps folders in and out of whatever directory space you assign it to. While I manage to not screw up too badly, given the complexity of some of the mod sets (I'm of course thinking about RSS/RO), it would be really nice to have the ability to have an easier installation. You have a list of 15+ mods you need to apply, and just glossing over 1 is a problem.

The whole science/accomplishment leading to tech notion is exactly backwards. A mission is first decided upon, then tech is developed to enable that mission. NASA did not land on the moon in order to figure ut how to land on the moon. Given that the devs have explicitly talked about "buffs" (YUCK!), a better paradigm would be to accept a mission (contract) to the Mun, say. You are then given points to unlock tech. Unlocking it gives you an experimental version (the game already does this sort of). The difference is that this version would be below the nominal spec of the part we see now. Upon completion of the mission (which might include "test" contracts), you get points to really "buy" the tech, at which point you get the better version ("buff" to the units normal capability). This gives a much more open-ended campaign, too. You could spring for missions farther afield right off the bat, or slowly build up better tech. Note that modders could then make the X tech have some chance of failures...

They cannot do anything without the cash register ringing. Getting KSP out the door makes sense, then additional features should be a paid add-on, IMO. Continuous game development requires a continuous income stream. It's rather a lot to expect infinite development for the cost of a single dinner at a halfway decent restaurant.

The ability to mine/refuel away from home is a great one. Hopefully it's the simple search of Oxygen/Hydrogen (which is life support, oxidizer, and fuel). The possibilities are mining/processing, or scooping. The latter would be from skimming gas giants (pretty science-fictiony, to be sure), or more realistically, water (though other compounds can be broken apart to yield the required bits). With better nuclear rockets, all you need is propellant in the tanks...

While I'm not keen on the explosions, it's likely there because it has to work for any part being destroyed… A decoupler WILL explode… if it hits a planet at 20 kps, for example

Once you get within physics range of the astronaut, you can switch and use his EVA pack to get him to the ship. I never use RCS on those missions. If you landed him, it was good, BTW, that's all that matters

No DRE on the list?

This is basically what many of us were saying. That even with Hard plus sliders left, the game would start slightly slower, then degrease to sandbox quickly. Had you used your first 15k (with whatever parts unlocked required) and gone to the Mun, it would have been gravy from even earlier. I think nI reported that I was on the Mun (or in orbit) my 3d launch… You also have to assume that most playing "Hard" have probably played at least one other career before, and hence know how to make a simple Mun rocket.

Wow. very nice looking. Well done.

I've noticed a difference between clicking the hatch to EVA, and clicking the picture of the guy I want to EVA. IN the former case they go launching out, but not the latter. Least on my Mk1 pod I was in last night.

What it is is excellent press. Nitpicking what game is a better analogy (that 99.9999% of people won't recognize the name of anyway) doesn't matter.

I should add that ANY addition of struts across any 2 parts that are designed to be separated is utterly non-intuitive, and should never happen. If you stack a rocket on clamp-o-trons, it either needs to stick together, or if you strut the 2 sections, they should be glued together forever. If such a struct is needed, explicitly define it in the parts description as being a decoupling strut with explosive bolts or whatever, and add a new strut that does really weld stuff together in a meaningful way.

This poll needed a 4th option, "pretty much the same."

Exactly. It's totally the opposite of what you'd expect, but is somehow required. Those need to lock whatever they attach parallel to the decoupler, with zero wobble.

Radial decouplers: Aside from the known issue with them (not ejecting properly), I'd like to see them not need struts. It is very non-intuitive for new players to add struts to things that are supposed to come apart. I hate having to add them to SRBs… it's just wrong.

I think a minecraft comparison is not only "ok," but could not possibly be better press for Squad. Had they been more picky about a comparison, no one would know the game they were talking about, and they get not hits. This might get a few people to see what it's all about. <br><br>Regarding the press, there is an apochryphal story attributed to Murray Gell-Mann. Supposedly interviewed by an excellent paper about his work, the story got the gist of his physics 180 degrees from reality. He then describes reading the other news Nd believing it... The reality being that it's all just as wrong to anyone in the know. Sums up journalism pretty well.

Their numbering scheme is arbitrary, and doesn't relate to release.

I play a little minecraft (my kids love it). It's not challenging at all (danger wise), but the thing I actually like is expiring around. It's fun to see cool, randomly generated landscapes and walk around in them. Not unlike landing on another world in KSP.

Yeah, Construction Time (a version of that) would be interesting. Some abstraction of time, anyway. I edited in another thing I forgot in my list above, BTW.

It has a similar appeal, I think.

Just to be clear, I wasn't bashing your mods at all. My point is that life support alone makes gameplay qualitatively harder, which is far more interesting than the quantitative slider stuff (rewards, penalties that never happen, etc). I agree with FAR, it's not really harder (as I said). People keep posting that the difficulty levels are great, or actually do, well, anything at all, but I'm not seeing it, and I'm a total noob to KSP. As for how to scale without being tedious… yeah, that's the million dollar question. It's challenging, to be sure. I think in general, it's not as simple as "sliders." For really addressing meaningful difficulty settings I think the game needs a few things: 1. If there are to be penalties for failed contracts, then the time limits need to be challenging. For example, 5-10 years to rescue a kerbal in orbit? How about 5 days or even 5 orbits, lol. (they can vary this by making some of the rescues a kerbal in a command pod, out of fuel. Then the time limit might be a few days. More difficult versions could be a stranded lander (appears possibly only after your own first munar landing). That might have several days, etc. 2. Life support. As I said above, a really qualitative change in how you think about spacecraft. If LS is added (with a slider in diff settings for about required mass LS per unit time), then rescue missions are scaled to that. If a suit is good for 1/2 a day, then you have 1/2 a day, etc. That's in addition to the inherent difficulty of LS. 3. Novel contracts. Make contracts that make sense, and require really specific goals. Some contracts for any exploration/science should be linked to a manufacturer, and require some use of their equipment on the mission. (i.e.: Moving Parts Expert Group (lander legs) has what is now a "plant flag on Mun" mission. It would say you need to land in a munar canyon with their legs to test how they deal with possible dust.) Again, the idea is for meaningful missions, that have some innate challenge to actually fly. If you want a "cost" challenge, you might have some "X Prize" type contracts that pay off for landing a probe on Duna for under XX,XXX funds cost, or something. Orbiters, stations, etc. All dictated by contracts, with specific challenges for gameplay (polar orbits, geo-Kerbin orbit, etc, etc). Assuming LS added, contracts can be available to maintain a habitation module for XXX days, weeks, whatever as well. 4. Time? Perhaps there is some expense per month of operating KSC. Contracts appear, and you can dismiss them, but you only get so many per month (determined by a slider). So if you wait for better contracts, you lose operating funds every day. There is a mod that adds building times for rockets, this is a good idea as well. Once you design a rocket that works, you could make it a standard type, and it gets built faster. If you want to take a rescue mission, then you better have one waiting to go up NOW… This is a huge change, but an interesting one (for people wanting a more management-like game). 5. Kerbal skill. Take the courage/stupidity and make it mean something. Allow the astronauts to actually pilot ships. Like MechJeb, but minus the mech. Have the ability for at least a few standard actions. Rendezvous and docking, landing, reentry… whatever makes sense, but I'm thinking a short pull-down sort of list. Stupidity alters science collection, efficiency (how much fuel used to rendezvous, land, etc), and it also alters the chance of some mishap (hard landing, hard docking, reentry failure, etc). Courage would modify stupidity based on conditions (landing mishap in progress… high courage would bump stupidity down a little, low courage would make him even dumber and more likely to choke. Lots of tweaking possible here). Again, you can toggle this in settings, and even if on, the player can always chose to pilot themselves, anyway. Note that all these alternate requirements are similarly controlled in the difficulty settings, so you can start a custom game, with 5000 science to start, life support set to easy (none tracked, as it is in stock), etc.

While it's nice to see something that is actually "hard," your mod installation is the difficulty. In my limited experience, FAR/DRE is almost a non-issue 99% of the time (probably because I already built rockets that looked like real rockets). It's a very slight difficulty modifier if at all (really it's different, not harder). TAC, or even Snacks is considerably harder than stock, OTOH (IMO, YMMV). It means you have to lift more into space, and missions further afield start requiring some planning in terms of having enough "stuff" to keep the crews alive. RT has it's own difficulty modifier WRT transmitting "science." Really with difficulty we're looking at the rate of funds/science increase per unit game time. At a certain point "difficult" corresponds in this case to "tedious." If there were non-currency related difficulty modifiers, then this might not be the case. I'd rank "Hard" as negligibly harder in terms of science gained per unit time played. Cranked down to lower returns, it's a little harder. I don't see FAR/DRE as hard, just different. Some might consider it a little harder, <shrug>. Life support is qualitatively harder, which is why I think it should be in the game, and on a slider (slider can be mass of LS needed per man-day of flight, basically).

In a "career" it is no more difficult to play/manage, at all. I've only had the chance to play maybe an hour, and it's totally clear that "Hard" while certainly slower than .24 in terms of racking up "science" is not qualitatively different, and honestly, only slightly slower. Once you hit the Mun, it does't matter, because in either 0.24.2 or "Hard" you start rolling in everything at that point. I'd not call it "fun," but I tested .25 on straight hard, which I found impossible to distinguish from 0.24.2, so I decided to test with it set "harder." Meh.